Part of the Yiddish Book Center's Online Lecture Series

Lecture 1 – Breaking Silences 

Yiddish women writers have been known primarily as poets. Why? What is it about poetry or about Yiddish that has encouraged this view? What else did they write? Often, they wrote about the urge to speak, to be heard, to refuse others’ expectations of them.

Lecture 2 – What’s Love Got to Do with It?

Women’s writing about love is often—perhaps surprisingly—erotic, unsentimental, addressed to men, women, family, and God. We’ll look at the ways in which women gave voice to their physical and emotional desires in their writing. 

Lecture 3 – War and Peace

Far from writing what some readers have criticized as “domestic” prose and poetry, women confronted the horrifying news about the Holocaust, revolution, and pogroms as these events unfolded. They also wrote about the hope for peace and how a post-war Jewish world might welcome the survivors and prepare a home for them and for Yiddish.

Lecture 4 – (Jewish) Civilization and Its Discontents

Writing in a variety of styles and genres ranging from midrash to modernist poetry and prose, women confronted the changes wrought by modernization and immigration. We will consider the ways in which modernity was embraced, questioned, and distanced in these writings. 

plus-circle Add Review

comment

Reviews